Reminders

When I see things like this I think:  Damn!  I wish my brother were still alive.  I’d show him this with a simple “Check it out, bro.”  And he’d most certainly reply, “Doggin!”

He was a free spirited kind of guy who died while “Goin’ Mobile,” as he liked to do, much in the spirit suggested in this song by The Who, from which the term in the picture came.  It was one of his favorite songs, and its energetic and adventurous message marked J how he lived.  But don’t get me wrong, he was extremely responsible.  He’d work drastic hours to build up time to enjoy weeks or months off so he could travel the world.  He died in a hiking accident in Brazil, where he was getting ready to teach English for a couple months.  He planned to return to his computer programming job in California when that gig was over.

So the sign struck me, and I found it ironic that just the day before when we had arrived in New Orleans for a conference, a friend had asked me if I found the local graves to be creepy.  When travelling by plane, they’re one of the first things you see, and after the initial, “Wait…what is that?!” it becomes clear that the “cities of the dead,” as they call them, take up residence in a variety of places in the city.  As you can see, they’re quite ornamental and very European looking.  Definitely not for me.

So the flowers on the Hippie Gypsy sign sent remorse followed quickly by a shot of warmth as I recalled many happy memories with him.  You see a few flowers memorializing the sarcophagi above, but I hope that when I’ve reached my end (which is so much easier to think about after the loss of one so close both in age and affection), I want to be put into a form that can nourish my favorite perennials rather than a space that needs embellishment.  I know that’s weird maybe to discuss, but after my friend and I talked about the what’s-up-with-the-tombs question, we moved on to what we’d want for ourselves.  After I’m gone I don’t want to take up any static space on the earth, I want to continue taking part in making it more fluid and beautiful.